Sunday, October 16, 2016

Newspaper Endorsements 2

Clinton offers our country clear advantages over Trump in every major area where the president must excel, including foreign policy, the economy and social justice.

Her experience as secretary of state for four years, during which she grappled with the complex issues of terrorism, nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, and Russia's increasing military aggressiveness, showed Clinton to be tough but diplomatic and thoughtful. Republicans who worked with her closely during that time have roundly praised her collaborative and thorough approach to decision making.

Clinton's economic program is detailed and nuanced, with emphases on shifting the tax burden from the middle class to the wealthiest Americans, promoting gender equality in the workplace and raising pay for people who work hard but don't earn a livable wage.

And she recognizes that America is great because of its diversity and inclusivity, advocating careful vetting of refugees, providing a path to citizenship for immigrants, and assuring that all Americans are afforded the protections of the Bill of Rights in police matters, self expression and individual liberty. Clinton recognizes that, in the long run, policies that target Muslims or other groups of people breed contempt and foster anti-Americanism.

The problem is not the positions Donald Trump is putting forth as a platform; the problem is Donald Trump himself. Even his own party is disowning him more and more, particularly after the recent release of a video in which Trump is heard making sexually offensive comments about women. It would be one thing if this was a first offense. But Trump has demonstrated a pattern of such abuse and sexism toward women over the course of his career and campaign. Will more of these types of videos be released in the days leading up to the Nov. 8 election? It’s possible, based on past performance.

And his attitude toward women is just part of the problem. Trump also has come across as stereotypical and even racist in his treatment of various minorities, even though he claims his presidency will be “great” for them.

After the sexually offensive video was released, House Speaker Paul Ryan, a reluctant Trump supporter from the start, told congressional Republicans he would no longer campaign with Trump. He said he would focus instead on ensuring Clinton doesn’t get a “blank check” by striving to maintain Republican control of the United States Congress.

Ryan, in effect, is conceding the election to Clinton, and for good reason. Polls show Clinton with a fairly sizeable lead, in part because of the sexually offensive video and Trump’s response, which was to apologize and shrug off the comments as “locker room banter.”

This nation needs a commander in chief who can get it through the next four years before it thinks about a Supreme Court in the next 10 or 20. The United States faces unprecedented challenges: an evolving Europe; an explosive Middle East; an aggressive China; and a growing Russian threat that must be met by a leader who does not look admirably upon Vladimir Putin.

Clinton has the foreign policy resume for this job. She doesn't just bluster about what she would do in the foreign arena, she has been there. Yes, she has made mistakes; those come with the job in a dangerous world. She understands the need to work with U.S. allies and would work to maintain alliances. Unlike her opponent, she knows who American allies are.

The Oval Office is still the most powerful office on the planet, and the person who occupies it must comprehend the gravity of the job. It requires self control, as the words and the actions of the president can put the lives of hundreds or thousands in jeopardy. Hillary Clinton is the candidate who is best able to maintain a reliable policy toward allies and foes.

It will come as a surprise to no one that this newspaper strongly endorses Hillary Clinton for president. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is completely unfit to serve and unfit to be a role model for anyone, let alone children. And that’s enough about him.

No one, no matter how they feel about Clinton personally, could argue that she isn’t qualified to be president. Few presidential candidates in history have had her range and depth of experience, grasp of government, knowledge of issues foreign and domestic, and history of public service.

Though some in her party count it as a fault, Clinton is by nature willing to compromise. Throughout a political career that started during the Nixon era as a legal researcher up to her service as secretary of state, results have come first. If compromise can save or improve lives, reduce a threat to national security, or move this nation or another in a better direction, she’s been willing to listen and to act.

We’ve spent hours with Clinton over the years, and she is warm, personable and down to earth. But when attacked, which has been almost a constant in her political life, she is guarded to the point of secrecy, tough and impossible to rattle.

If this were a normal presidential election, we’d probably spend the next several paragraphs comparing Clinton’s policy positions with Trump’s. After that, we’d make a case for the candidate whose views lined up with ours more frequently on the most important matters. That’s how we came to endorse Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, Republican John McCain in 2008 and Republican George W. Bush in 2004 and 2000.

Such an exercise would be beside the point this year. It doesn’t matter what a candidate thinks about, oh, tax policy and federal land management if that candidate is neither qualified for the nation’s most important elective office nor temperamentally suited to it. Such is the case with Trump, who has never held elective office of any kind. To be sure, a presidential candidate could compensate for such a deficit with the right mix of experience and temperament. But The Donald comes up well short here as well. He has shown himself to be a gleefully offensive narcissist who mistakes demagoguery for debate. Is this the sort of person who ought to be, say, nominating justices to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Clinton would come to the office with her own basket of controversies and failings, including the fundraising practices of the Clinton Foundation and her improper use of a personal email server while secretary of state. These are serious matters, and so, too, is her lack of honesty in accounting for her questionable e-judgment. Clinton is far from a perfect candidate.

But she is a qualified one. Exceptionally qualified. She’s served in the United States Senate for eight years, from 2001 to 2009. She subsequently served as secretary of state for four years, from 2009 to 2013. Before all of that, of course, Clinton spent a tumultuous, though in many ways successful, eight years in the White House as first lady. Whatever her shortcomings, Clinton understands the job she seeks: its demands, its limitations, its seriousness. It’s not an office for beginners or buffoons, and she is neither. She is likely to be a highly competent president and perhaps even a good one.

As with our readers, many on our board have a strong distrust of Secretary Clinton. They argue Clinton’s careless handling of classified emails when she was secretary of state, her use of a private email server and her failure to turn over all the emails to the FBI, were disqualifying actions. They felt Clinton lied to investigators, destroyed evidence and that the FBI’s conclusions were not reflective of what the investigators found and recommended.

But this newspaper group ultimately puts its trust in the FBI investigation, and rejects the continuous castigations of doubt by Clinton’s opponents. FBI director James Comey, a Republican, concluded that while Clinton was reckless in her handling of classified documents, “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges. While opponents said Comey’s hesitation was a political act, Comey put it the opposite way: based on the facts, prosecuting such a case would surely constitute a political act.